A Constitutional Convention is forming...

...at least in Virginia.

The Story

Virginia House Speaker Bill Howell's plan to amend the Constitution so that a 2/3 vote of the states could overturn overturn any federal law passed by the Congress and signed by the President.

I'm a little suprised that no one on these boards has picked this up...an actual constitutional convention is being proposed (none of that mumbo jumbo of 'sovereign' citizens thinking up the idea) to create a constitutional amendment to allow 2/3 of the state legislatures to overturn ANY federal law passed.

Interesting idea indeed.

That's good News !
as long as that's all they do.
Everything else works ,
If they would just abide by it.(The Constitution that is).
It is the Law of the land Right ?

Peace.

A constitutional convention at this juncture would be disastrous. With all the corrupt politicians both state and federal there is no way we want them diddling with the constitution.

reply to post by hawkiye
Yea, that's a very good point,
that is scary but, how do we stop these criminals ?

Our founding fathers took this into consideration, unfortunately in 1913 the 17th Amendment was approved which took away the states representation in congress. If we could just repeal the 17th amendment, the Senators would be answerable to their state legislatures and if they didn't vote the way the state wanted they could be removed bu the state and replaced.
However, I am against having a constitutional convention for fear of what other changes would be made.

Originally posted by hawkiye
A constitutional convention at this juncture would be disastrous. With all the corrupt politicians both state and federal there is no way we want them diddling with the constitution.

At this juncture, I think it is either amened the Constitution like the gentlemen from Virginia says, of the States will soon rebel from the Federal government. I like this bill, and hope with all my heart it passes.

reply to post by autowrench


I'm hearing shades of 1861 here. Virginia was the last state to join the Confederacy, maybe we can be first in a final bid for freedom from the Federal behemoth.

I too am hearing the prelude to cannon fire, and have for some time now....

DISSENT AND UNREST IN AMERICA

A while ago, a so-called future time traveller name of John Titor said the a Civil War will come to America once again. Not that I believe this man, but the signs are everywhere that Americans are getting mad at their Government.....

The continuing episodes of protest and dissent in the United States have their basis in the First Amendment to the Constitution, a great safety valve that is lacking in most other nations of the world. The First Amendment creates a sanctuary around the citizen's beliefs. His ideas, his conscience, his convictions are his _ own concern, not the government's.

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free
exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the
people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances"

All dissenters are protected by the First Amendment. A "communist" can be prosecuted for actions against society, but not for expressing his views as to what the world order should be. Although television and radio time as well as newspaper space is available to the affluent members of this society to disseminate their views, most people cannot afford that space. Hence, the means of protest, and the customary manner of dissent in America, from the days of the American Revolution, has been pamphleteering.

Other methods of expression, however, are also protected by the First Amendment-from picketing, to marching on the city streets, to walking to the State Capital or to Congress, to assembling in parks and the like.

It was historically the practice of state police to use such labels as "breach of the peace" or "disorderly conduct" to break up groups of minorities who were protesting in these unorthodox ways. The real crime of the dissenters was that they were out of favor with the Establishment, and breach of the peace or disorderly conduct was used merely as a cloak to conceal the true nature of the prosecution.

In 1931 the Supreme Court, in an opinion by Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes, held that the First Amendment was applicable to the States by reason of the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. That Clause provides that no State shall deny any person "liberty" without "due process." The Hughes Court held that the right to dissent, protest, and march for that purpose was within the purview of the First Amendment. Breach of the peace and disorderly conduct could, therefore, no longer be used as an excuse for the prosecution of minorities.
Parades, of course, can be regulated to avoid traffic problems and to allow for easy access to public offices by other people. Pickets may be regulated as to numbers and times and places. But the basic right of public protest may not be abridged.

While violence is not protected by the Constitution, lawful conduct, such as marching and picketing, often boils over into unlawful conduct because people are emotional, not rational, beings. So are the police; and very often they arrest the wrong people. For the police are an arm of the Establishment and view protesters with suspicion. Yet American protesters need not be submissive. A speaker who resists arrest is acting as a free man. The police do not have carte blanche to interfere with his freedom. They do not have the license to arrest at will or to silence people at will.
This is one of the many instances showing how the Constitution was designed to keep government off the backs of the people.

Military strategy has indeed become dominant in our thinking; and the dominance of the military attitude has had a sad effect at home.

There have always been grievances and youth has always been the agitator.

Forces too numerous to catalogue have produced a decade of protests that is in many ways unique:

(1) It comes during a time of prolonged affluence, not of depression;

(2) It is not ideological in its orientation, but is essentially
activist;

(3) It is led by the young people who, though not unanimous in tactics or in objectives, have given these protests a revolutionary tone. The goal of their revolution is not to destroy the regime of technology. It is to make the existing system more human, to make the machine subservient to man, to allow for the flowering of a society where all the idiosyncrasies of man can be honored and respected.

The First Amendment was designed so as to permit a flowering of man and his idiosyncrasies, but we have greatly diluted it. Although the Amendment says that Congress shall make "no law" abridging freedom of speech and press, this has been construed to mean that Congress may make "some laws" that abridge that freedom.
The courts have written some astonishing decisions in that area. Here are a few examples:
A person may not be punished for believing a so-called noxious or communist doctrine; but he may be punished for being an "active" advocate of that ideology.
A person may not be prosecuted for reading or teaching Karl Marx; but he may be sent to prison for "conspiring" with others to conduct classes or seminars on the Marxist creed.
A person may be convicted for making a speech or for pamphleteering if a judge rules ex post facto that the speaker or publisher created a "clear and present danger" that his forbidden or revolutionary thesis would be accepted by at least some of the audience.
A person may be convicted of publishing a book if the highest Court, in time, decides that the book has no "socially redeeming value."
In these and in many other respects we have fostered a climate of conformity.

Big Brother, in the form of an increasingly powerful government and in an increasingly powerful private sector will pile the records high with reasons why privacy should give way to national security, to law and order, to efficiency of operations, to scientific advancement, and the like. The cause of privacy will be won or lost essentially in legislative halls and in constitutional assemblies. If it is won, this pluralistic society of ours will experience a spiritual renewal. If it is lost we will have written our own prescription for mediocrity and conformity.

The tendency of these mounting invasions of privacy is the creation of a creeping conformity that makes us timid in our thinking at a time when the problems which envelop us demand bold and adventuresome attitudes.

Electronic surveillance, as well as old-fashioned wire tapping, has brought Big Brother closer to everyone and has produced a like levelling effect. In 1968 Congress made wire-tapping and electronic surveillance lawful provided it was done with a warrant, as provided in the Fourth Amendment, issued by a judge on a showing of probable cause that certain specified crimes had been or were being committed. Exempted altogether from any supervision were national security cases where the President was given large authority to proceed against suspected spies and subversives. But the Administration soon broadened that category to include domestic groups who attempt to use unlawful means to "attack the existing structure of government." The Wall Street Journal sounded the alarm that such broad surveillance "could lead to the harassment of lawful dissenters." And the New York Times, in reply to the claim that Presidential power extends to surveillance of groups which threaten the government, observed that that was the theory behind the oppressive search warrants authorized by King George III and they were the reason we got the Fourth Amendment.

The FBI, NSA and the CIA are the most notorious offenders, but lesser lights also participate: Every phone in every federal or state agency is suspect. Every conference room in government buildings is assumed to be bugged. Every Embassy phone is an open transmitter. Certain hotels in Washington have allotments of rooms that are wired for sound and even contain two-way mirrors, so that the occupants can be taped or filmed.
It is safe to assume that in the federal capital, as well as in each state capital, there is no such thing as secret classified information.

The dissent we witness is a reaffirmation of faith in man; it is protest against living under rules and prejudices and attitudes that produce the extremes of wealth and poverty and that make us dedicated to the destruction of people through arms, bombs, and gases, and that prepare us to think alike and be submissive objects for the regime of the computer.

The dissent we witness is a protest against the belittling of man, against his debasement, against a society that makes "lawful" the exploitation of humans.
This period of dissent based on belief in man will indeed be our great renaissance.

There is I believe , a common suspicion among youth around the world that the design for living, fashioned for them by their politically bankrupt elders, destined them either to the nuclear incinerator or to a life filled with a constant fear of it.


The Pentagon has a fantastic budget that enables it to dream of putting down the much-needed revolutions which will arise in Peru, in the Philippines, and in other benighted countries.

Where is the force that will restrain the Pentagon?
Would a President dare face it down?
The strength of a center of power like the Pentagon is measured in part by the billions of dollars it commands. Its present budget is1/3 of the total federal budget, the GNP.

A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine.
Thomas Jefferson

A wise and frugal government, which shall leave men free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor and bread it has earned - this is the sum of good government.
Thomas Jefferson

All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent.
Thomas Jefferson

Educate and inform the whole mass of the people... They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty.
Thomas Jefferson

Enlighten the people generally, and tyranny and oppressions of body and mind will vanish like evil spirits at the dawn of day.
Thomas Jefferson

Every citizen should be a soldier. This was the case with the Greeks and Romans, and must be that of every free state.
Thomas Jefferson

Every generation needs a new revolution.
Thomas Jefferson

Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms of government those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny.
Thomas Jefferson

Conformity is the jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth.
John F. Kennedy

Let us not seek the Republican answer or the Democratic answer, but the right answer. Let us not seek to fix the blame for the past. Let us accept our own responsibility for the future.
John F. Kennedy

Ladies and Gentlemen, before we had a Constitution, which has been stamped upon, and trampled beneath the feet of Tyrants, we Americans had the Articles of Confederation. Every Patriotic American should study and know these Articles, for true freedom lies in pure knowledge.
Articles of Confederation : March 1, 1781

I have been predicting this for some time now, and it's happening right before my eyes....

In case you didn't hear about it on the mainstream media (which you
haven't because they want to keep us asleep), numerous states are currently declaring or have already declared sovereignty, including:

Washington

New Hampshire

Arizona

Montana

Michigan

Missouri

Oklahoma

California

Georgia

US Supreme Court: Tenth Amendment:
Ratified in 1791 as part of the Bill of Rights, the Tenth Amendment specifies that “the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”

Thomas Jefferson described the Tenth Amendment as “the foundation of the Constitution” and added, “to take a single step beyond the boundaries thus specially drawn … is to take possession of a boundless field of power, no longer susceptible of any definition.” Jefferson's formulation of this doctrine of “strict construction” was echoed by champions of state sovereignty for many decades.

Dictionary:nullification

1. The act of nullifying.
2. The state of being nullified.
2. Refusal or failure of a U.S. state to recognize or enforce a federal law within its boundaries.

Nullification is the doctrine by which states claimed power to declare a law of the federal government unconstitutional. It was the most important theoretical alternative to the idea that the U.S. Supreme Court is the final arbiter of constitutional controversies.

THE ABSTRACT RIGHT OF SECESSION.



The Lieber Code of 1863
(Martial Law that is still in effect!)

States to feds: Stay in D.C.!

The New Secessionists

THE CONFEDERACY PROJECT A Blueprint For Peaceful Secession

The Sons of Liberty

New American Civil War Recruiting Station

The United American Freedom Foundation

American Patriot Network

Oath Keepers Website

SECESSION.NET

Constitutional Amendment to Secede from the United States of America

Originally posted by hawkiye
A constitutional convention at this juncture would be disastrous. With all the corrupt politicians both state and federal there is no way we want them diddling with the constitution.

+1000 think we'll have any say in it??This is extraordinarily dangerous. Ithink we would see the people afraid of firearms move to delete the second. ( could happen. There's no convincing some folks.)

That's it then; the end of Jefferson;Madison;and Franklins America.?

Sounds great to me, while they are at it maybe they can return the election of US Senators to state legislators rather than by popular vote (17th amendment), and eliminate the income tax (16th amendment).

reply to post by autowrench


Bravo, Autowrench! It's minds such as yours that will preserve our republic. Your comments illustrate why TPTB will do everything in their power to censor the freedom of expression the internet affords all of us. As time goes by It's becoming more and more obvious that they can't afford to allow people like you a forum. Common sense and history are their biggest enemies.

Originally posted by autowrench

Originally posted by hawkiye
A constitutional convention at this juncture would be disastrous. With all the corrupt politicians both state and federal there is no way we want them diddling with the constitution.

At this juncture, I think it is either amened the Constitution like the gentlemen from Virginia says, of the States will soon rebel from the Federal government. I like this bill, and hope with all my heart it passes.

The states would be better off rebelling from the federal government! It is nuts to open the tables on changing the constitution right now. With the corrupt self serving spineless morons in power would you really trust them to amend the constitution in our favor and represent our interest? Especially since they haven't done that in nearly a century? They have already added amendments that can be proven to have never been properly ratified by the states and no one cares, would you expect the current batch to suddenly be honest and do the right thing? Come on man use some common sense here.

And if we did give them the opportunity there is no way In hell they would just stick to the one proposal. I can hear it now; well while we are here in convention lets fix a few other things... Sorry man but this is insanity to even consider it as good idea... that is exactly how we got the constitution they were only a8uthorized to amend the Articles of Confederation not institute a new form of government. but they did it anyway and we got the things like the commerce clause and federal forced taxation etc.

So I'm getting a mixture of replies on this...

Do you think the state legislature's should have veto power over federal law? Thereby requiring this convention to create such an amendment to allow that.

Should the convention not occur because you have no faith in your state legislature? Are they just as corrupt as on the federal level?

In addition to repealing the 16th and 17th amendments, do you think the convention should do more?

With the additional amendment proposed of repealing federal law, do you feel that a constitutional convention of states would/should do more? Example: Repeal Obamacare.

In answer to your questions
If we repeal the 17th amendment we wont need another amendment
Yes I fear a constitutional convention because the state legislatures are just as corrupt as the federal.
The only other change i would like to see is term limits for senators and congressman. 6 years for senator and 4 years for congressmen

if I understand the principles of the idea behind the constitutional convention is that it is made up of the populace not just politicians, and many many groups can agree to form the CC, and yet not agree at all on what should be done once one is formed. the results of such a convention (i.e proposed amendments) would then be sent to the congress so they could present them to the states, i believe aprox. 35-36 states need to ratify it for it to be an amendment. To my understanding it is only the ratification that is performed by the state legislators. I think it takes about 13-14 states to veto it, so no chance of some wild hairbrained ideas taking root (in theory). I think a CC is exactly what the people should form, scare the bejesus out of corp-politicians LOL

I've just been told by a friend, that each state would apoint a delegate, who would have no independant voice, but simply present the majority opinion of the people of that state. Direct democracy. If the state of florida wanted blue stripes, then that is all they are authorized to discuss, unless he returns to present new information for consensus. not at all like the congress where you elect someone and hope he makes good choices. i still have to verify this stuff, but thats the understanding of the group I'm with right now. Its been refered to as the peoples recourse, should congress be corrupted. Gonna ask a professor at the college, he teaches constitutional law and might provide more insight.